Research Jan Potters

Abstract

Thomas Kuhn is primarily known for his book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' (1962). There, he offered a novel philosophical view on the history of science: science is not continuously progressive, but rather goes through radical paradigm-changes. Less known is that Kuhn in 1962 also started a project to map the history of quantum mechanics. This project, titled 'Sources for History of Quantum Physics', aimed to collect as many source materials as possible, and to interview physicists who had participated in these changes. It was very innovative, because interview methods had never been used before in history of science. Because of the size of its output, the project still acts as a source for many historians and philosophers today. My aim is to carry out a historical-philosophical study of the Sources-project. On the one hand, I will study its place in Kuhn's thinking: how does it compare to his views on paradigms, and did it influence his later work? On the other hand, I will investigate its influence on later historical-philosophical debates, in particular concerning what quantum mechanics can teach us about the nature of physical reality. Finally, I will also reflect on whether philosophical views about science in general shaped the project, and hence, possibly, also these later debates.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Leuridan Bert
• Fellow: Potters Jan

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates the role of perspectives in scientific knowledge production. The general idea is that, e.g., a scientific model does not depict reality as it is per se; it rather offers one of multiple possible points of view for producing and evaluating knowledge for specific uses. Perspectives always arise out of a specific historical context. For example, whether a new measurement counts as knowledge depends not only on its correctness, but also on whether the experimental procedure lives up to the scientific community's knowledge standards. As such, perspectivists try to steer between absolutist scientific realism (absolute, ahistorical truth) and constructivism (everything-goes relativism). The current literature, however, is unclear on how to identify perspectives and their influence on knowledge production. As such, they are not yet really applicable to actual historical research. To improve on this I will study, for one episode where the historical literature shows a clear influence of different perspectives, how particular scientists distinguished these perspectives, and how these influenced their work. I will focus on how M. Abraham and P. Ehrenfest, between 1900 – 1912, used electron models from different perspectives (electromagnetic, relativity, and quantum) to interpret measurements of the electron's mass, and evaluated others' use of these models. This will then inform my work on a historically adequate account of perspectives and their influence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Leuridan Bert
• Fellow: Potters Jan

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A lot of contemporary metaphysicians (James Ladyman & Don Ross, Penelope Maddy, Tim Maudlin, ...) describe their philosophical inquiry as naturalistic, i.e. grounded in scientific practice: both their domain of study - the nature of reality - and their methodology are inspired by the functioning of science. These naturalistic approaches, however, all seem to suffer from the same problem: it is not completely clear what it is about scientific practice that makes it valuable to their metaphysical inquiry. This vagueness in what they take to be science leads to a specific problem, the problem of interpretation. Scientific results have often received different interpretations in the past, i.e. different (mutually incompatible) accounts of what these results tell us about reality. Because of the vague conception of science employed, it unclear how these naturalistic approaches can handle this ontological ambiguity of scientific results in a way that is actually naturalistic. My goal is to improve these naturalistic approaches by investigating what can be metaphysically useful in the practice of working scientists. To this end I will study, via historical cases, the way in which interpretations of scientific results are handled in scientific practice: how do scientists arrive at a particular interpretation, and what do they do when there are different interpretations of the same result? Such an analysis can then inform naturalistic metaphysical inquiry, since it can provide us with a model of how reality is investigated in science.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Leuridan Bert
• Fellow: Potters Jan

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

A lot of contemporary metaphysicians (James Ladyman & Don Ross, Penelope Maddy, Tim Maudlin, ...) describe their philosophical inquiry as naturalistic, i.e. grounded in scientific practice: both their domain of study - the nature of reality - and their methodology are inspired by the functioning of science. These naturalistic approaches, however, all seem to suffer from the same problem: it is not completely clear what it is about scientific practice that makes it valuable to their metaphysical inquiry. This vagueness in what they take to be science leads to a specific problem, the problem of interpretation. Scientific results have often received different interpretations in the past, i.e. different (mutually incompatible) accounts of what these results tell us about reality. Because of the vague conception of science employed, it unclear how these naturalistic approaches can handle this ontological ambiguity of scientific results in a way that is actually naturalistic. My goal is to improve these naturalistic approaches by investigating what can be metaphysically useful in the practice of working scientists. To this end I will study, via historical cases, the way in which interpretations of scientific results are handled in scientific practice: how do scientists arrive at a particular interpretation, and what do they do when there are different interpretations of the same result? Such an analysis can then inform naturalistic metaphysical inquiry, since it can provide us with a model of how reality is investigated in science.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Leuridan Bert
• Fellow: Potters Jan

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project